macskull

I think this is happening for three main reasons: The size of the population as a whole. Even if the HC PvP crowd is 3-5% of the playerbase that's still a small number of people when HC's playerbase is small to begin with. Diluting the population lowers the chances you'll find PvP anywhere. The ease of getting to level 50 and IOing/accolading characters. Even post-I13 there was still some level stratification and at least Siren's Call and RV were active on some servers (mostly Freedom but the PvP population sort of condensed onto that server as time went on). When you can create a new character and have them to 50, IOd, and accoladed all in that same day, there's little motivation or incentive to PvP at lower levels. The state of PvP in Recluse's Victory. RV is pretty much the only active PvP zone (see #2) but some of the changes made to the game since shutdown have made PvP there pretty awful. It was busy and at least somewhat entertaining back on live because emote canceling and enterbasefrompasscode didn't exist and incarnate powers were harder to come by so most people didn't have them. Now most dedicated zone PvPers will have full T4 incarnates (which do not function separately in PvP than in PvE and are pretty imbalanced in PvP to begin with) and if you get close to killing them they'll just macro TP to their SG base. Basically, RV PvP has a tendency to be really dull unless there are multiple teams in there and that doesn't happen often.

If there was a certain part of the game you enjoyed, and every time a thread about that part of the game came up that thread was swamped with people saying the same wrong things about that part of the game, you'd probably get a little annoyed too. It also doesn't help when people frame their issues as complaints rather than asking for help. "I keep getting two-shot by Stalkers, nerf Stalkers" is a lot more likely to get you laughed at than "Hey, I keep dying really quickly to Stalkers, what can I do about that?"

So we're once again back to conveniently ignoring the efforts of the PvP community to get new/curious players introduced to the game in a way that is friendly to them. Got it.

Did you miss the part where I said there were already tools to deal with that behavior? EDIT: Mechanics issues aside there seem to be two main complaints people have re: PvP. "There's a lot of trash talk and I don't like that." See above - report particularly egregious people using the /petition tool and provide chat logs and screenshots as necessary, use the /ignore feature as necessary. Suddenly there's no chatter and you can continue on with your day in peace. "I get ganked by groups of people whenever I'm trying to do XYZ thing." If you're in a PvP zone trying to do some PvE objective (pillboxes, heavies, Shivans, WB nukes, etc.) the other players in the zone are under no obligation to leave you alone just because you're PvEing. Go get some friends and come back in with a numbers advantage and your problem will probably go away.

(Emphasis mine) This is because they are not answering the question asked, they are taking their complaints and injecting them into the discussion. If I'm asked "what would it take for you to PvP?" and I reply with "people are mean" that doesn't answer the question. "Get rid of the trash talk" would be a constructive response, but as it's already been pointed out many times in this thread, it isn't really possible to police other players in that manner and the tools to ignore the offenders already mostly exist. In this case, the tools the player wants already exist but they're choosing not to use them so it feels more like an excuse than an actual reason. The last part of your response is fine - you don't PvP because you don't like it. There's nothing wrong with that and obviously you're not the type of person this thread was directed at. The thread was directed at players who would PvP but because of some barrier - either real or perceived - don't.

Meanwhile, a reasonable person might be upset by that but will also realize that maybe that waiter is having a bad day and isn't usually like this and will withhold snap judgement. If I go to a restaurant and they mess up my order I'm not going to immediately swear off that restaurant forever. I'm going to give it a few more tries to see if that was a one-off thing or if it happens repeatedly.

No, just pointing something out.

And the realistic answer to that is that it isn’t possible, just like it’s not possible to convince non-RPers that RP in CoH isn’t just a bunch of futa catgurls circle-jerking in Pocket D - unless they go check it out for themselves and actually take the time to ask questions and figure things out. The community can only do so much and in reality everyone pretty much has to meet halfway and go from there. The people you’re describing are the ones who would find an excuse to not get involved in PvP no matter what the community did and as a result they’re not the people the community is trying to get interested.

Why even bother posting if you’re not going to contribute anything of value to the discussion? Hell, I don’t think you’ve had a single constructive post in this entire thread (or in most other places on the forums but that’s neither here nor there).

Let's disable roleplaying since there are some really sleazy people that get involved in that too. Seems a little idiotic, no? That's basically what you're saying. Also... coming into a thread asking "what can be done to get you interested in PvP" and replying with "totally disable it?" And people say PvPers are toxic...

"Lowbie" PvP events happen sometimes but they get boring pretty quickly. I think most of the PvP sort of condensed around level 50 because of how easy it is to level/IO/accolade a character on Homecoming compared to back on live. That and the "exemplared level +5 powers" change seriously changed the balance of power in the lower-level PvP zones. Not sure what you mean about being "practiced in exploits in order to be successful" though.

Yeah, I think the ship has sailed on that one. Homecoming's population is too low, period, to support something like that, even if it were actively utilized.

Basically it pulls up a combat attributes window for the target that you can navigate through, just like the one your character uses.

The voice chat thing is has less to do with being a player-created problem and more to do with the the level of coordination competitive team PvP requires. It's not unique to this game either. It's not just me, though, when we do PvP events there are always players who show up without mics or whatever and that's fine, as long as everyone knows what's going on you can adjust accordingly.

You can use the combat analyzer temp power for that, I don't think that's something Herostats ever tracked.

PvP is by nature a competitive environment and there is always going to be some amount of talk back and forth. That's true in this game and that's true in any MMO, MOBA, FPS, or anywhere competition exists. Your analogy doesn't really work - I think everyone who is even a little bit interested in PvP understands it's a competitive environment and there's going to be some trash talk but they can also completely eliminate that with tools they have available and they're still left with a fun game. If I went to a restaurant like you described, as long as the service was good and the food was good, I couldn't care less what the other people were saying if I literally didn't have to hear them. EDIT: There have been a variety of answers to the OP's initial question. To the people who simply say "I don't like PvP" or "there are no rewards" - those are perfectly legitimate answers and at least you're being upfront about it. Many of the other answers regarding difficulty of building a character, or having to build a character in the first place, or not liking the players... meh. The tools exist to solve all those problems, the only real barrier to entry at that point is your own motivation to do something about them.

The arena PvP community actively looks for new players, forms teams, and holds organized events. That being said, with very few exceptions PvPers are not GMs and have no way to police or stop the behavior you're describing. It should be pointed out that sort of behavior is mostly found in zone PvP and you can disable chat from the opposite faction and /ignore those you don't want to hear from. Getting rid of the broadcast chatter solves a pretty big part of it. It is incredibly disingenuous to argue the PvP community insults those who are interested in learning while ignoring the efforts of that same community to get new players interested in PvP.

I think Discord is commonly used even for the beginner-oriented events because it's just easier to put out information that way. If you're not inclined to listen or talk in voice chat that's okay and as long as you make that known to whomever is calling on your team they should be able to work with that. If I know I have people on my team in those events that don't have voice chat I'll call targets in team chat with a bind and I'd expect the player without voice chat to have an identical bind to show when they're on a target. You don't need voice chat, but it does make it easier.

It also says it's an AoE with 255 target cap - the heal and other buffs are applied to all targets within the listed radius, even to the defeated leaguemate you activated the power from - but since they're defeated they can get any buffs except rezzes so nothing happens to them.

When HC first launched and AE XP was actually full value (and you had to pay for XP boosters) my first few 50s were something around 45 minutes. It's a little less than twice that now, but I haven't actively sat down and knocked out a 50 in one go in quite a while. Still pales to those 15-minute 50s back on live though...

I mean, yeah, that's always been true. In a competitive environment there are going to be some powers or sets that are better in certain scenarios than other ones. That's true in this game, that's true in almost every other MMO, and that's true in pretty much every competitive video game. I think it's fair to say "I don't like PvP because I don't like things that are competitive," but trying to blame that on the game's mechanics seems a bit disingenuous. I can be competitive on a character that isn't "meta," I'm just making it a little bit more of an uphill battle.

"I don't PvP because only certain powersets are good at PvP" != "I don't PvP because the powersets that are good don't interest me." Besides, it's not really true. I've seen some pretty wacky builds be somewhat successful in PvP. Success in PvP still has a lot to do with the person at the keyboard. That being said, the things you mentioned can be competitive - what build can clear X farm fastest, or what build can solo Y AV fastest, or what build can solo Z task force the fastest. There's always going to be one singular answer for those. There isn't one singular answer for "what build is best at PvP" because PvP doesn't work that way. Besides, aside from 1v1 scenarios (which have always been sort of rock/paper/scissors) you can always call for help from friends. If you're just hopping around a PvP zone trying to get badges and you run into problems, grab some extra people. Even with PvE builds a larger group of coordinated people will have some success.

Is this a joke?

I don't think I've ever spent close to even half that on any of my PvP builds. Enhancement converters, lowball bids, and patience are your friends. EDIT: To clarify, I meant relative to live. Most of my characters now have builds I would have never had on live simply because everything is much more affordable and it's even easier to make inf. A build that might cost me 300-400 million here would have been 5+ billion on live, easy, probably even higher.

Nothing, really. People have hosted PvP events in zones before but they're not particularly popular. It's hard to balance sides when people will naturally want to gravitate toward the side that already has more players. It seems at this point that players prefer to play at level 50 anyways, which pretty much leaves Recluse's Victory. Zone PvP on its own has quite a few issues which I doubt will ever be seriously addressed. (Emphasis mine) I hear this a lot but I don't really buy it, especially with how trivial it is to level/IO/accolade a new character on Homecoming. Yes, you'll be more successful at PvP with certain powersets and builds, but that's true for pretty much everything in this game. If I want to make a +4x8 fire farmer I'm not going to roll a Mercs/Kin Mastermind. If I want to build a character to solo AVs and GMs I'm not going to use a FF/AR Defender. PvP is the same way - anything can do it but you'll be way more successful if you're built for it. The biggest difference there is that the NPC AI in this game is relatively dumb and the powers enemies get is pretty limited, compared with PvP where you're actually encountering other players who have (usually) put some thought into what they're doing.